Book 1: Chapter 17: Resurgence

Book 1: Chapter 17: Resurgence

Before Elijah dropped into unconsciousness, he saw a familiar notification that jarred him back to awareness.

Congratulations! You have reached level three, earning two free attribute points. Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

It was followed closely by another:

Congratulations! You have reached level four, earning two free attribute points (four total). Would you like to allocate free attribute points?

Two levels? That didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t done anything. Sure, he’d jabbed his now-ruined, homemade knife into the monster’s neck, but Elijah felt certain that he had only hastened its demise. The panther had been the real killer. But the evidence was right in front of him; the System had given him credit, and the resulting Ethera had pushed him to level four.

As he continued to bleed out, Elijah’s mind turned sluggish, and his ability to focus slipped further and further away. It was like wading through thick mud just to force his status open and allocate his attribute points. When he finally managed to wrangle his mind into doing what he wanted, he shoved the free attribute points into Ethera, bringing his total up to eight.

Immediately, Elijah felt an influx of magical energy as his core doubled in size. Thankfully, the upgrade didn’t just provide capacity, but rather, it gave him an amount of energy equal to what he’d get from four Ethera, leaving him with a half-full core. The influx was a heady sensation that nearly drove him to distraction, but he once again harnessed his concentration and forced himself to cast Touch of Nature. The healing spell soothed the injury in his stomach, dragging his intestines back into place and sealing the wound. But before it could do much more than patch things up, Elijah’s core ran dry.

He was still gravely injured, and any movement would threaten to tear the wound open, but he’d bought himself some time. His survival was now all but assured, provided he didn’t run afoul of any other monsters.

Elijah glanced at the corpse of the scaled creature that had attacked him and shivered. That, of course, brought with it a significant amount of pain. That monster had come out of nowhere, and even with his newly strengthened body and magical powers, it had been completely out of his league. Without the panther...

The panther!

The enormous cat was lying only a few feet away, its breathing shallow and its eyes filled with agony. And it wasn’t surprising. The panther had killed the monster, but it had also paid the price. Shallow wounds decorated its entire body, but Elijah’s eyes were drawn to the three much more serious injuries it had sustained.

The most troubling was a long gash along its side. At least two feet in length, and gaping open to expose the panther’s ribs, it was a ghastly wound that, even in the best of times, would likely spell a wild animal’s doom. If infection didn’t set in, then perhaps it would have a chance. But given the foul odor coming from the now-dead monster, Elijah considered that unlikely.

Next, one of the panther’s legs was turned the wrong way, and Elijah saw its broken bones bulging beneath its sleek skin. Finally, the semi-aquatic monster had ripped a chunk of the panther’s face off. In short, the huge cat had almost assuredly given its life to save Elijah.

Or perhaps it made more sense that the monster was its mortal enemy. After all, though Elijah had been paying tribute to the panther in the form of a daily fish or two, he’d never gotten the sense that it liked or accepted him. In fact, it had always seemed on the edge of killing him outright. The idea that it would protect him, except as a side effect of its true intention, was almost laughable.

But still, Elijah owed the animal his life.

It was at that moment that he made a choice. If he recovered enough Ethera before the panther succumbed to its wounds, he would try to heal it. If not, then it just wasn’t meant to be. With that in mind, Elijah settled back against the tree and waited on his Regeneration to refill his core. Slowly, his mind began to churn, drawing the ambient energy in before sending it through his soul and down into his core. The process was both soothing and distracting enough that he wasn’t overwhelmed with the pain of his still-serious wound.

To further distract himself, Elijah opened what he’d begun to affectionately refer to as his spell book:

Archetype: Druid

The druid is the defender, ally, and cultivator of nature. Features bonuses to natural Regeneration, energy density, and One With Nature.

Required Aspects:

[Scholar], [Nature]

Spells

Touch of Nature

Harness the power of nature to heal yourself or an ally.

Snaring Roots

Call upon nature to summon a snarl of roots to bind your enemies’ movements.

The druid is the defender, ally, and cultivator of nature. Features bonuses to natural Regeneration, energy density, and One With Nature.

Required Aspects:

[Scholar], [Nature]

Spells

Touch of Nature

Harness the power of nature to heal yourself or an ally.

Snaring Roots

Call upon nature to summon a snarl of roots to bind your enemies’ movements.

One with Nature

Draw power from nature.

Eyes of the Eagle

Briefly enhance your eyesight with the power of a fearsome raptor.

Ancestral Circle

Create a place of power.

Nature’s Bounty

Encourage the growth of plants.

Storm’s Fury

Call forth the power of a storm and harness its might.

The first spell felt powerful, but the description didn’t give any hints as to what it was supposed to do. Creating a place of power sounded great, but how did it benefit him? He would have to try it out if he wanted to discover the answer to that question.

The second spell, Nature’s Bounty, at least seemed more straightforward, and he could already see how beneficial it could be. A good portion of his diet depended on foraging, but what if he could create a garden and accelerate its growth? It would change everything about his life in the wilderness.

The last spell was clearly Elijah’s first attack spell, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Storms were deadly, sure, but he wasn’t certain how he was supposed to use such power to fight his enemies.

Elijah shook his head as he pushed himself to his feet. While healing himself and the panther, he’d rarely moved from that position, and he’d grown stiff. In the past, he’d have had quite a bit of difficulty sitting still for that long, but in the throes of his quest to mend his savior’s wounds, moving around had been the last thing on his mind.

Then, Elijah remembered that he still needed to allocate his six free points. He did so, splitting them between Ethera and Regeneration, bringing them to eleven and twelve, respectively. His original plan had been to focus on his physical attributes once he got Ethera and Regeneration to ten, but he’d never expected to gain so many levels so quickly. He still wanted to get the most out of his physical training, so he’d chosen to focus on his magical attributes for now. Once Strength and Dexterity plateaued – if they did at all – he would reevaluate his plans.

For now, though, Elijah had some spells to test. First up was One With Nature, but when he embraced the spell, channeling Ethera from his core and through the pathways of his soul, he got a big shock. His jaw dropped as a cascade of information spread across his mind, telling him how the spell worked.

Grinning, he said, “Oh, that’s good. Really good. This could change everything.”